Magic's Genesis- Sword of Wilmamen

by Rosaire Bushey

  Kimi joined as well and together they rode across the sand, the humans on camels with Kimi trotting by their side. The efforts of the wielders in pushing back the Qorghal had not been lost on the soldiers of Dar’Ahlmon, and when they arrived at the first guard post they were quickly admitted, a runner sprinting ahead to notify the Dynast.

  As they approached an enormous tent at the rear of the forces, soldiers dropped to a knee in salute as they passed, only Rykaba remained standing as they dismounted and joined him in his tent.

  “Your eminence, another green dragon will soon take the field,” Lydria began, and before she could finish, a low moan of despair could be heard among the Dynast’s staff, men and women covered in sweat, dirt, blood, and in some cases burns. Several had blood dried to their necks where it had seeped from their ears. They did not want to hear anything of dragons. The Dynast, however, remained calm until Lydria had finished. “There is a green dragon named Synca, who will join us. She has no love for Wynter, only her mate who is still in the madman’s sway. Could you please inform your people to not harm the dragon who approaches from the north?”

  Rykaba motioned to a member of his staff who immediately left the tent, her smile wide in anticipation of having one of the great beasts on their own side of battle. “Will she fight for us?” The Dynast’s question was made loudly, so that his people would know what to expect and to manage their expectations of help should the answer be not in their favor.

  “The dragons fight only in their own interests, your eminence,” Lydria said plainly. “If it is in Synca’s interest to fight in a way that favors us, then so be it. But she will not hinder us, nor will she fight against us. It may be, however, that her presence stops the others from fighting as well and, as I’m sure you’ll agree, that is worth much.”

  With Lydria’s statement made plainly, Rykaba dismissed all his attendants and guards from his tent save one; Ilyadra of the Dar’Duz stood with the Dynast, a commander’s sash across her chest and waist. The Dynast’s staff would, he was sure, spread the word of what Lydria had told him, and his army would find solace in her words. When they were alone, he motioned for them to sit and he fed Kimi fresh camel steak. The cat gratefully accepted the food and ate in the presence of the Dynast, understanding it made the boy happy to have him nearby.

  “Kimi thanks you for your generosity. Yes, I can speak with him and he with me,” Lydria said, answering the unspoken question. “It is a special connection we share. The dragons, however, are capable of speaking with and being understood by any being of Eigrae. They are a power unto themselves.”

  Rykaba nodded. The young man seemed to have grown and aged many years in the few short days since his introduction to Krieger. His manner was sure, and he trusted his own counsel. “What are your plans, Wielder?”

  Lydria looked at Krieger and leaned forward in her chair, resting her hands gently on those of the Dynast. “Before we discuss our plans, I want to know if you’ll let me help you?” The Dynast could feel the warmth Lydria poured into his body, and all the pain he had grown accustomed to in his life fell away. For a moment he sat straight and tall and his face glowed with the realization of what a normal life could be. Finally, he pulled away, and his smile faded as the pain came back and his body contorted once again.

  “You offer a gift without equal, Wielder. How could I ever repay such a thing?”

  “You are climbing a difficult road and trying to do right by your people – the Ahlmen, and the Dar’Duz. You have sought the friendship of Wesolk. You have placed faith in yourself to ferret out corruption and tyranny in your own home. All of these things work to the benefit of Eigrae, and for that, what I offer you is the best I might do by way of payment to you.”

  Rykaba smiled and for an hour the three talked about what would come the next day. Then, with little left to be said, Rykaba struggled out of his chair and walked away from his tent to the baggage train where he and his guests saw his wounded soldiers lying under tent fabric, with healers doing their best to ease their pain.

  Lydria told the Dynast that other than ease their pain, there was nothing she could do for the burns caused by the dragons, but still, she walked down long lines of men and women and spent time with each, Kimi by her side, and where she stopped a golden glow filled the makeshift shelters. When the light dimmed, she moved to the next wounded solider, and just as surely, she would be followed by the soldier she had healed. In short order there was a long line of the Ahlmen standing in loose formation behind her.

  When she finished, the Dynast stood in front of her, his face full of grateful tears. Slowly, with his eyes never leaving Lydria’s, he took off his armor and stood in front of his soldiers, under the sun and bare. He held out his hands to Lydria. His curved back, so obvious even beneath his clothing, was a beacon when naked, calling every set of eyes to an unnaturally curved spine. In that moment, his soldiers understood the pain their leader had lived with his entire life. Each bone of his spine could be seen, shifting in a tight curve between his hunched shoulders and his waist.

  Understanding the Dynast had decided to accept her offer of healing, Lydria smiled. This, she thought, is why she must continue to use her magic; this is why the power must be shared. She reached out slowly and placed her left hand on the dynast’s shoulder, her half finger tapping a rhythm on his skin. She did not close her eyes but kept them locked on the eyes of the young man in front of her, his tears of happiness for his soldiers telling Lydria everything she needed to know about the true strength of the young ruler.

  Where the light from Lydria’s magic was a warm glow in the shade where the soldiers lay, it burned fiercely now, a ray of light that reached out in all directions and drew the army to it. As surely as Kimi would seek out food, the soldiers sought out their leader. When the glow faded, the Dynast of Dar’Ahlmon stood tall and straight and as one his people knelt before him. He reached out and hugged Lydria, kissing her on each cheek, wiping his eyes before his soldiers stood once more and cheered their sovereign.

  Lydria moved away from the Dynast who was being crowded by his soldiers, even those who had been healed themselves, reaching out to do something none had ever dared do – touch their Dynast. In that moment, Rykaba did something no other Dynast had ever done – he let them.

  “You gave him back many of his soldiers, and you healed him of an ailment he has had since birth, and yet they swarm around him and not you. People are funny, don’t you think?” Perryn shook his head as if not understanding, and Grettune hugged him closely by his waist. “They know it was Lydria, dear, but they now have a ruler who has been touched as they have; a ruler who is not above them, one who has bared himself to be healed, proving there are other powers greater than titles. They flock to him because they can be part of him. But they can never be part of what has healed them.”

  “It is for the best, certainly,” Lydria added. “If they kept following me, I wouldn’t be able to move.” Lydria smiled broadly, truly happy and walked with her friends toward the beach where they had to prepare for the coming battle.

  Several hours before dawn Synca landed on the beach near Lydria and waited. She was not alone. With her was a young dragon the size of a pony.

  “Is this Sanprax Veridian?” Lydria was looking back and forth between the dragons and went to take the smaller dragon by either side of the head and looked deep into his eyes. “You are a handsome fellow,” she said, and her words were rewarded by a long thin tongue that snaked out of the dragon’s mouth and traced a line up the side of her face. “Thank you, Wielder.”

  “He would not miss a chance to meet his father, and I enjoy the company,” Synca told the rest as they gathered around to admire the first true dragon of Eigrae.

  Moving aside and away from Sanprax and the others, Lydria explained the situation on Ep’Muta to Synca and was grateful to have the dragon agree with her.

  “I will help as I may. It pains me to know that Garprax and Jex were involved in battle with the soldier
s. This was the single thing Burvig warned us of before they left to free Wynter. Whatever happens, he told us, do not fight the humans or we will end up hunted to the end of days.”

  Synca spoke to her son while the others prepared to leave. Lydria would ride Synca while the others would take boats a wide distance from each other. The soldiers of Dar’Ahlmon had nearly come to blows over who would row the boats and accompany them, and they had been ready to go for more than an hour, waiting only on the arrival of Synca.

  Climbing astride the dragon’s neck, Lydria watched her friends move toward the boats, and noticed Sanprax preparing for flight as well. “Will Sanprax go with us?”

  “Yes. He will travel to the island – he will not leave my side.”

  So be it, thought Lydria. She turned to Kimi, “go to the Dynast and stay by his side until we return. It will do well for him to have a giant cat accompany him like a pet dog.”

  “Did you just call me a dog? I might stay with him if you keep on like that,” Kimi teased. “Maybe he will have more camel. Have you ever tasted camel? It’s very nice. Be safe, Lydria, and come back soon.”

  35 - Battle of Ep’Muta

  More than a dozen small boats set off from the beach at once, most loaded with volunteers from Rykaba’s army, and one, barely visible, drifting further from the pack as they quietly made their way to the island. The single boat made landfall before the others, and soon after the craft had been hauled ashore, the shouts of Qorghal could be heard on the island, quickly followed by lit arrows and stones from the fort’s siege engines, hurtled aimlessly toward the shore and the Ahlmen who struggled to get out of the boats and find safety on land.

  “We can do nothing for them,” Krieger said. “let’s move toward the fort and see what we can do about getting in.”

  To get to the fort, they walked through the outskirts of a small village outside the walls, where their senses were assaulted by the stench of death and bodies being left to rot on the streets.

  The Qorghal left no one alive when they took over the island. Grettune and the others carefully picked their way over dead men and women still holding the hands of their children. All of them slashed and gutted in a pointless frenzy of bloodlust and mayhem. As she looked up and down the dark and deserted street, Grettune was glad Lydria was not here, but she decided the Qorghal had no place in an Eigrae that desired peace.

  Haustis took Grettune’s elbow and pulled her away from the slaughtered family she was staring at – a couple no older than she and Perryn, and between them the remains of a tiny baby, less than a year old. It could have been her family, Grettune thought, but these people had no collars among them. They had hardly more than a sword among them, yet they tried to save their children as best they could. Grettune let Haustis lead her away and she turned with clenched teeth to follow a path being made by Krieger and Hokra.

  The walls of the fort were not created to withstand the siege of an army. They were built simply to protect the weapons that were used to watch over the waterways around the island. From a defensive standpoint, the building was almost ceremonial. The walls were thick, but they were not very high by the standards of siege walls. Getting into the fort would be easy.

  The ballista and catapults were turned toward shore, firing randomly and without care to accuracy. The Qorghal had obviously killed anyone who was trained to fire the weapons so instead of sowing carnage and death on the beach, they were being mishandled and were effectively no more than harassment and distraction. To their western flank, Grettune could still hear the cries of the volunteers who had made it to the beach. There were enough volunteers to refill the boats several times over and waves of soldiers were determined to flood the island until there were no Qorghal left alive.

  When she turned her attention back to the wall, Grettune saw Hokra climbing the rugged rock surface and peering over the edge before returning to Krieger outside the wall. “There are scores of the things huddled around the gate of the fort, waiting to be let loose,” he said. “There is a dragon standing in front of their path. When it leaves, they will rush the beach and overwhelm any of Dar’Ahlmon’s soldiers.”

  “We can climb the walls and divert their attention,” Haustis offered.

  “No.” The word came sharp and clear and everyone turned toward Perryn. “Hokra, how long would it take you to dig through the wall?”

  “To fashion a tunnel for a human, just a few minutes with my hands or less with my hands and magic.”

  “Then fashion me a tunnel, my friend, while the rest climb the walls. When I am through the wall, fire your arrows and get their attention; that will give Lydria and Synca an opportunity to get to Wynter.”

  As Hokra made his way to the wall, Grettune grabbed Perryn by the arm and kissed him hard on the lips. “Don’t do anything foolish. Your children will need you.”

  “Children?”

  “Twins, I think.”

  Perryn kissed her back and smiled at the others. “Twins, she thinks,” he said, an enormous smile playing across his face.

  “There will be plenty of time for that later,” Krieger said, unable to suppress a smile. “Go, and we will watch for your sign – and try not to shoot you.”

  Perryn ran to Hokra who was making quick work of the rock wall with his hands ripping into the stone and his collar ablaze, removing feet of rock in an instant. At the same time, the others climbed the outer wall; Grettune using magic to aid her ascent and standing at the most distant point so as to be less of a target, per Krieger’s orders.

  Haustis knelt on one knee and laid out six black arrows by her feet. Relin took his quiver and leaned it against his leg, stringing his enormous bow. The single-sightedness of the Qorghal kept their attention focused solely on the gate and the dragon’s attention as well was tuned to the excess noise being made by Rykaba’s forces.

  Perryn’s signal seemed to take a long time to arrive, but when it did it came quietly, a whirling cloud of dust as a figure streaked from the wall straight into the waiting mass of Qorghal. Right before he struck, Haustis, Krieger, and Relin loosed their first arrows. Hokra had climbed to stand beside Grettune and together they bent their will toward pulling down the wall and gate in front of the dragon, tons of stone falling around the beast and crushing the Qorghal who ran forward toward the noise, hoping to find a way out of the fort.

  Perryn’s impact could be heard by his friends on the wall as he slashed out at the nearest Qorghal, his fur a blur in the firelight, moving so fast that the Qorghal who swung their swords at him hit only their own comrades. For a minute he moved unchecked until the dragon, recovered from the shock of the falling rocks, let flow a burst of flame that decimated half the gathered Qorghal and sent the rest scattering through the breach in the walls toward the invaders on the beach.

  The green dragon ignored the stampede of Qorghal and focused on the still form in front of her. The brown, orange fur was matted and streaked with blood, and its chest heaved, but its narrow eyes stared unblinking at the elongated snout looking down at him.

  Raising its head as if preparing to strike down and bite the footless beast in the dirt in front of it, the green dragon reared back at the last minute as another green, slightly larger and far angrier landed in front. A third green, a much smaller green, without a collar landed soon after and lifted Perryn off the ground and took him to safety by his wife.

  “Hello, Jex. Has that madman given you what you’ve come for? Has he told you stories about how he can make you human again?” Synca spoke directly to the other green dragon as the two began to circle each other. She spoke so her friends would hear her, and so that her husband might know she was there as well. “Look at yourself, Jex! This is what Burvig warned us of. He warned us that others would try to use us for their own purposes.”

  “Wynter can make us human again.” Jex fairly growled the words, her rumbling throat providing a warning to any within distance to cover their ears and prepare for a potential repeat of the dragon’s voice t
hat was used earlier.

  “He lies. He cannot make you human again. There is no power that can do so. Accept it, Jex. You. Are. A. Dragon. Wynter did us a favor, don’t you see. We are the most powerful beings on Eigrae, and we are among the most intelligent as well. There is nowhere we cannot go. There is nothing we cannot learn. There is no thing, no person, no power than can stand in front of us.”

  Jex stopped moving, and Synca looked at her, trying to decipher her feelings before saying, quietly, “not even Wynter, Jex. He stands in front of you only because you let him. He uses the false hope of your humanity to enslave you. Do you think he made us so that we could be powerful for our own purposes? No, sister, he made us to be his slaves; to be his killers. What happens on the beach now – that is him using you.”

  Jex relaxed into a position that relieved the tension in her massive legs, her tail swatting at the remains of the broken gate behind her and throwing the bodies of dead Qorghal against the jagged edges of the fort’s wall. Behind her Qorghal fought with human men and women. A human, and two Eifen swung swords cutting off access to the fort, and two wielders now stood along the top of the wall, their collars glowing brilliant blue as arrows and rocks bounced harmlessly away from their bodies while their magic played havoc unseen among the Qorghal below them.

  Lowering her eyes Jex breathed deeply. “You are right, of course, Synca. I have known for a long time that there is no going back, and I understand what you say. Perhaps we have been given something great. But I also understand I was not born to this. Perhaps there is something over the water to the south? Perhaps there is nothing and I will die when I can no longer fly. I wish you peace, Synca; peace for both you and your child.”

  Without waiting for Synca’s reply, Jex pushed off from the ground, launching herself into the air. She moved her wings without pause until she was far above the island and she quickly soared over the ocean to the south.